The child sex-abuse scandal at Penn State intensified late last week when university President Graham B. Spanier and the school’s legendary gridiron coach, Joe Paterno, were fired.

Allegations that the team’s former defensive coordinator sexually abused eight young boys on multiple occasions over a 15-year period require little commentary. If any of the indictment’s 40 counts against Gerald A. Sandusky are true, he belongs in jail for the rest of his life.

To many, this is about a prolific pedophile and the high-tanking university personnel who covered for him.

That’s the way the grand jury saw it too. Hence, its indictment of Tim Curley, Penn State’s Athletic Director, and Gary Schultz, Senior Vice-President for Finance, for failing to report the alleged abuse and then lying under oath about what they knew.

Last week’s decision by the Board of Trustees to fire Spanier and Paterno, even though neither was charged criminally, feeds the popular perception that top officials at the school were tacit enablers of a monstrous abuser.

What’s more likely, though, is that Curley, Schultz, Spanier and Paterno are getting a bad rap.

Michael McQueary, a graduate assistant at Penn State, testified before the grand jury that, on March 1, 2002, he saw Sandusky having anal intercourse with a young boy in the showers of the Lasch Football Building on the University Park Campus.

If that’s true, however, why didn’t the hulking 28-year-old rush to the boy’s aid? Why didn’t he at least call the police?

That he did neither raises questions about his character and his story.

McQueary told the grand jury that he left immediately after Sandusky and the boy saw him, but that he resolved to tell Paterno of the incident the following day.

But what precisely did he say to Paterno and, thereafter, to Curley and Schultz?

Whether and to what extent they are culpable, legally and otherwise, depends on the answer to that question.

McQueary testified that he specifically informed all three that he had seen a young boy being anally raped by Sandusky.

However, each of them vehemently denied that. And their denials make sense. Think about it.

What do you suppose their reactions would have been to McQueary’s seeing a child in such distress and doing absolutely nothing about it?

PRECAUTIONARY EDICT

Curley said that McQueary spoke only vaguely in terms of “inappropriate conduct” that made him “uncomfortable.”

Curley nevertheless informed Sandusky that he could no longer bring any children onto the Penn State campus, a directive that could be viewed as prudently precautionary.

He also informed President Spanier of the incident as McQueary had reported it to him.

Similarly, Schultz testified that he was called to a meeting with Curley and Paterno at which the latter reported “disturbing” and “inappropriate” conduct in the shower by Sandusky toward a young boy.

At a subsequent meeting with Curley and McQueary himself, Schultz recalled that the graduate assistant’s story gave him “no indication that a crime had occurred.”

Spanier testified that Curley and Schultz reported an incident to him that made a member of Curley’s staff “uncomfortable” and that it involved “Jerry Sandusky in the football locker area in the shower with a younger child and they were horsing around.”

The grand jury indicted Curley and Shultz for perjury simply because it chose to believe McQueary’s version of what he told them. It was a credibility judgment, unsupported by any independent evidence, in an environment controlled by prosecutors.

It’s also reasonable to assume that McQueary knew whom the investigation was targeting and the testimony that prosecutors wanted to hear from him.

That doesn’t necessarily make him a liar, of course, but it offers one possibility why he might have re-analyzed what he actually saw in the showers, and embellished upon what he actually said to Curley, Schultz and Paterno.

What he actually said is critical to whether Curley and Schultz violated Pennsylvania law by not reporting the incident to law enforcement. This is because the duty to report arises only where there is reasonable suspicion that a child is being abused or neglected.

Legalities aside, even the question of whether these Penn State officials should have somehow done more to protect children from Sandusky comes down to what they actually knew about his predatory acts.

And that, once again, brings the enigmatic McQueary to the forefront.

It’s impossible to condemn the sexual abuse of a child loudly enough or long enough in a civilized society. Which is why the indictment against Sandusky, replete with specifics of shocking depravity, has generated such outrage and, with it, the drumbeat to punish everyone who could have, but did not, stop him.

Ironically, the person who could have stopped him nine years ago is Michael McQueary, the prosecution’s star witness; the man who brought down four Penn State officials with what sure look like lies; the guy who says that he saw a little boy being raped and simply walked away.

[Daniel Leddy’s column appears each Tuesday on the Advance Editorial Page. His e-mail address is JudgeLeddy@si.rr.com.]